


I will be the David Copperfield to your Wonder Woman or the ballad of Roman and Gerri

by Bethoven19



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Stream of Consciousness, The epic love story of the Slime Puppy, return of the prodigal son, welcome to the disturbed mind of Roman Roy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:20:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bethoven19/pseuds/Bethoven19
Summary: He is contemplating gnawing his arm off, looking at the floor wishing for it to open and swallow him when shapely legs in killer heels, enter his field of view. He looks up, meeting blue eyes looking at him between a pair of severe glasses.“So you are Roman, fuck up number 3? I am Gerri Quinn, general counsel”.And this, ladies and gentlemen is a love story
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	I will be the David Copperfield to your Wonder Woman or the ballad of Roman and Gerri

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fanfic, ever. It's completely ridicule, problably inane, not planed at all... I was inspired by all the wonderful authors who have given us so many brillant stories these past few weeks, thank you for giving me the courage to do this. Also, English is not my first language, so please forgive my mystakes.  
> There is almost no Gerri in the first chapter because I write from Roman point of view, so a lot (and when I say a lot it is a lot of backstory)  
> Please send me your thoughts, tell me if I should continue.

There was no place for a spare among the Roy family. Connor, the first (failure) try, Kendall, the heir apparent, the bright future of WayStar RoyCo, Shiv the girl, the apple of their father eyes and… him: third son, third child, born sickly and gray, too small. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he comes to think that, had he been born a kitten, he would have been drown in a rucksack, down some muddy river.  
In his earliest memories, his father is a terrifying figure, dark and looming, always shooting, only coming down to him to strike him, always resenting him for not being another golden child, athletic and healthy.  
His brothers absolutely love tormenting him. Making him play the dog, locking him away in some dark cage, a show of force for their father. His sister, just a few months younger than him (as if to make sure to erase the disappointment he represents) is no ally, easily swayed to take Connor and Kendall’s side, always angling for their father’s favor.  
In a world of money, happiness comes with a price, a constant competition and it seems that the stakes were always too high for him, the odds in his disfavor from birth.  
So, he decides that if he is going to get punched, he will at least deserve it. He learns to speak back, to tease, to annoy, his word his best weapons. He reads, constantly, hungrily: about how Isis captured Ra by learning his secret name, how Odysseus managed to trick and to blind the Cyclop by telling him he was named No one (Nemo), about Loki Liesmith, god of lies and deceit, trickster infamous, an imp among giants. He has to be more intelligent, quicker, sneakier but still they bully him, still he doesn’t amount to anything in Logan Roy’s world.  
And so he is sent away, the weakest one thrown out, sent to military school, the process sped up by his parents disintegrating marriage, no one having time to deal with him when they have properties to split, venom to spit to each other faces.  
It’s hard, harder than anything he imagined. At the house (never home), there was at least a few moments of respite, camaraderie with his siblings so fragile it was gone in a blink of an eye, but still there, still real. There, there is no ally, only enemies. The teachers have only contempt for him, cataloguing him the spoiled child, not good at anything, a weed to be pulled off (thanks for the recommendation Dad). The other students literary hate him, he is the last one to be served in the refectory, his plate passed along to be spit in, any occasion good to strike him. He learns to shower at night with no one around, to always look over his shoulder, danger everywhere.  
Still he runs his mouth. He insults, he needles, still hoping that if they realize that he has detected their point of weakness, spouting it joyfully to their face, they will leave him alone. It’s doesn’t work, he learns to live with a permanently bloody and split lip, black eye, marks more or less recent marring his body.  
Still, he learns, he reads. About military strategy, about patience. He also takes up boxing (just to dance out of their reach, to dodge, still not strong enough to fight back) and running fast and alone for large period of times.  
When one of his teachers come to his bed in the middle of the night, he manages the next morning, still trembling to send an SOS to his father office. He doesn’t believe anything will come of it, twelve and already jaded, all cutting edges and hunched shoulders but he knows he has no one else to turn to.  
No answer, for weeks. He doesn’t sleep, not anymore. Spends the night in the toilets, hiding. During the day, he is a pale figure, drifting away, even the other pupils leave him alone, a show of mercy or a show of pity, he will never know.  
His salvation comes in the form of a middle aged man, with the most obvious combover he has ever seen and an orange tie adorned with a tortoise… Roman (been so long since he called himself that way in his head, for years now, he’s been no one, Nemo) stands absolutely still, blinking in the doorway of the headmaster office, so much color so foreign among the grey and washed up greens of military schools.  
The man is Baird Kellman, his father’s general counsel, head minion and also the recipient of his clandestine letter. Behind him the headmaster is shaking, white as a sheet, beads of sweat running along his temple. Words like “litigation”, “suing the school”, “personal responsibility” are thrown about and seemingly in the blink of an eye, Roman (he is making quite a habit of having a name) is free, standing stupidly outside, a car waiting for him and Baird, his bag at his feet (and he is so going to burn it as soon as he can). Baird puts his hand on his shoulder (first time in a long while someone has done so without malice) and nudges him alone, makes him sit in the back seat of the car. The journey is long, hours and hours, silence stretching between them, Baird looking over some papers, Roman trying to come to sense with this new found liberty (also trying to calculate if, was he to jump from the car at the speed it is going, his head would explode on impact with the ground). At one point, he falls asleep, only waking up to get on a plane, his body and mind so tired after months of being constantly alert he has no more strength to ask questions.  
By early morning, they are in England, pulling up to his mother’s family estate, still imprinted in his mind, even if he only came there once or twice, the memory of the servants’ kindness, the cook slipping him little cakes when no one was watching, the groundskeeper taking him to explore the field, seared in his brain, one of the rare ray of sunshine in his childhood. Baird pushes him inside, gets back in the car and disappear.  
For the first time in years, he sits in front of his mother, the ice queen herself, the tiniest twitch of her left hand little finger betraying her nervousness. For a long moment they don’t speak, contemplating, evaluating each other like strangers. Even if the divorce has only been finalized some months ago, Lady Caroline had almost disappeared from her children’s lives years before, leaving them to deal alone with their father’s mercurial personality.  
And then she speaks, she talks about the estate, the necessity for her, her family, and legacy to live on, to have an official heir. She explains that neither his brother or his sister seems interested in an aristocratic education and so she has resolved to fetch him, to mold him into a proper gentleman, a British lord.  
He sits, stunned for long minutes and then he starts to laugh, loud, demented. It’s only when he feels water on his cheeks that he realizes that he has started to cry, madly, uncontrollably. Only then, does she move, standing, coming near him, crouching and touching him with a sole finger to his face and oh… is that tenderness, is that what a mother touch, even a glimpse of it is supposed to feel like?  
He accepts… Only to escape from the educational center in rural Alabama his father has promised to send him to, if he doesn’t comply (Yes, Lady Caroline Collinwood is not an alien lizard disguised under an human skin and capable of some form of motherly affection but still she is ready to do what needs to be done to get what she wants).  
Here comes the Cinderella part (well, if the fairy God Mother was a middle-aged lawyer incapable of assuming his baldness and with a seriously disturbing passion for tortoises). He is assigned tutors and masters. He spends his days learning about etiquette, and music, and dancing, and history, and heraldry. Horsemanship, ballet, tea drinking (so much tea). He gets sent to a boarding school, a proper one with uniforms from the past century. It also comes with a gigantic library. For the first time, he is among peers, here he is not Roman Roy, spawn of media mogul Logan Roy, he is Romulus Alexander Charles Collinwood, heir to a very old family. Here, a silver tongue is revered, honored. He learns that his words can cut, but they also can provoke laughter, they can make his opponent underestimate him, they can forge friendships. He thrives and he discovers music, he takes up piano, plays for hours. He still goes to boxing practice, choose this rather than be trampled on the rugby field. He will never be golden, never be tall and broad-shouldered but he comes into his own, learns to walk with his head semi high, learns to look into the other’s eyes when he speaks.  
He doesn’t see his siblings, nor his father. They often come to Europe for Christmas but he manages to evade them, choose to stay at school rather than spend those few uncomfortable days under the same roof.  
He goes to university, chooses to pursue law. For a few moments, he thinks about choosing penal law to defend children from going through the same thing as he did but he resolves to throw humongous amount of money to associations and entities far more experienced in this than him to make up for it.  
At 25, he obtains his diploma, Roman Roy the solicitor. But from a passing interest during his school years, the arts have become a passion, he goes to Paris, spends two years learning about art history, spending his allowance between museums and café, speaking French with a horrible accent.  
He doesn’t have many friends, many acquaintances, pals to drink with, girl that latch onto his arm or his neck, try to gain his favor. But most nights, he comes home alone, walk along the Seine from Saint-Germain or goes down from the Montagne Sainte Geneviève to go back to his apartment on the Place des Vosges.  
He creates a little production company, gives money to create tv shows, both in the United Kingdom and in France. At first, it doesn’t really work and then, the breakthrough, a concept no one wanted to hear about, an unexpected success. He is respected in his field but he already wants to do something else, would rather abandon his toy rather than have it take away. He sells it for a very good price, stays in Paris, crossing the Channel only to go see his mother, to learn more about the estate and the responsibilities. She is already giving hints about marriage, grandchildren, legacy, proper English heiress. He runs away as fast as he can from this can of worms.  
He goes back to Paris, goes back to the arts, he is a patron, an expert at sniffing out young talents and giving them the limelight, they need to find success.  
He is thirty and trying to buy a Manet when its ownership is contested by the descendants of a Jew family deported during the war, this changes his life. He takes up on the subject of stolen art reappropriation like a drowning man clinging to a life line.  
For the first time, he can do something good, his family has always taken from the world, he will give some back.  
He meets the families, goes through the archives, convinces his mother to finance him, speak about public relationship, about good will and good image. He has found a goal and will do anything to attain it. He has no illusion about being a good man but he wants to do some good things in the world.  
And so, Lady Caroline proposes a deal: money and resources for his attendance to her parties, her balls, being a perfect bachelor, a prize to be dandled in front of young debutantes, countesses and ladies and duchesses all seemingly identical.  
And Romulus Collinwood becomes the perfect bachelor, he spends the majority of his weekends in England, gritting his teeth to go through another inane conversation about this or that, but his mind is always on the hunt, to find another stolen painting, to give it back, to reunite it with it history. At first, the girls don’t seem to catch up on his disinterest but after he forgets one of them in the woods of the estate because he had a breakthrough, he gets a reputation…. His mother lets up on her efforts.  
The New Yorker does a short feature on him (the work of his mother who has imagined herself as his head of PR). It’s factual and documented, even if the photographer seems to have a huge crush on him and insists for a photo shoot on the riverside… He looks like a short legged, bearded Robert Pattinson, it’s not a good look.  
For the first time in almost twenty years, he gets a word from his father, just a short note (his father doesn’t do emails, if he could he would still have foot messengers running around or carrier vultures) with his broad writing on it : “At least, you cannot fuck things up more than Nazis”… Charming (especially if the rumors about ATN are true).  
He hears from Baird, well they speak about it during one of their monthly phone conversations. The older man uses words like “pride”, “happy for you” and he feels a prickle behind his eyes like every time the Tortoise pervert tries to express what they both know (Baird has been more of a father to Roman than Logan will ever be). It’s the last time they will talk.  
Baird dies a month later, he doesn’t learn about it until six monts after the funeral, his father summoning him to the States to deal with some legal matter about theirs trusts, the email (coming from one of his secretaries) ending with “with Baird Kellman six feet under, it’s time to resolve some things”. He doesn’t cry, he feels numb… sometimes later he wakes up from his torpor, discovers he will need to have a window replaced and buy a new computer.  
He contemplates not going, a huge two fingered salute to his bastard of a genitor but now he has to pay his respects (love) to Baird and so he resolves to go. Packs a suitcase, takes the first flight to New York, doesn’t forward any information to his father’s secretary.  
After the cemetery, after spending hours in front of a tombstone and yelling at it about fucking dying on him and not telling him about it, after leaving a stone tortoise on the stone, he goes to WayStar RoyCo HQ. He thinks he came to visit when he was very little, seems to remember feeling so small in front of the Tower, a black and malevolent castle in the infantile mind. He charms the receptionist, goes straight to the executive floor, gets out of the elevator and finds himself walking straight into his brother Kendall.  
They haven’t seen each other for such a long time, his brother looks old, already a little gray at the temples, black smudges under his eyes. They don’t hug, Kendall, seemingly not surprised at all to find him walking back into the fold, steers him back to the elevator and up to the helipad.  
He gets in the helicopter and strength into a family reunion…. His fathers, eyes hidden behind dark sunglass grunts out his name and falls silent. At his side, Marcia, his third wife looks at him like he is some king of curious insect, then come Shiv and her fiancé Tom (Mother showed him photos and described him, he resolves to tell her she was wrong… he is much worse) and finally Connor the only one, stupid enough to pretend being overjoyed by his arrival, he backs off after being threatened to get punched.  
Logan talks about protecting Marcia, giving her a seat at the board (Baird always voted for him, his death means he will have to deal with that directly). The others protest, trying to hold on the power drifting through their fingers like dry sand. He says nothing, he has learnt when to speak and when to shup up and watch chaos unfold.  
And then the old man has the audacity to have a stroke, to strand him with his siblings in this stupid hospital waiting room, watching stupid news or scrolling aimlessly on Twitter wile jetlag wreaks havoc on his body.  
He is bone tired, wants nothing more than to get out of there but Shiv is latched on his left hand, hasn’t let go since they left the helicopter and if he tries to shake her off he fears he may get punched by Tom, the farmer who has a head and some thirty pounds on him.  
He is contemplating gnawing his arm off, looking at the floor wishing for it to open and swallow him when shapely legs in killer heels, enter his field of view. He looks up, meeting blue eyes looking at him between a pair of severe glasses.  
“So you are Roman, fuck up number 3? I am Gerri Quinn, general counsel”.  
And this, ladies and gentlemen is a love story.


End file.
